THAT COVER. I CANT. We have prince charming Asahi battling our hero Souma over princess Erina. Ahahahaha! Love it. ^-^
Within the story itself, we skipped ahead a few days to see that Asahi is indeed romancing Erina. ^^’ And Erina has no idea how to deal with this. She has NO experience with love. Even innocent hand holding in shoujo manga makes her blush, so of course she’s blushing in this situation. She’s being very persistently and blatantly pursued by a charming guy, and she doesn’t quite know what to do about it. And no, she’s not a damsel in distress. She has just been flung into a situation that’s outside her expertise, so her reactions are perfectly fitting with what we’ve seen previously about her character.
That being said, Erina hasn’t fallen for Asahi’s charms at all. That was the point of this chapter. Yeah, she’s having tea with him, and recognizes that his approach is a good one. But, as we see, it’s Souma she’s thinking about. Even Asahi picked up on that. I LOVED that panel where Erina was remembering Souma claiming Erina as his. That’s what stuck with her. ^__~
I also really liked seeing other polar star dorm members. I feel the chapters are always comfier when they are involved, and this was indeed a comfy chapter. I loled as they gossiped about the ways in which Souma ended up in the trash haha. And I love how Souma came to the conclusion that he just needs to get Erina to say his food is delicious in order to be able to challenge Asahi again. I don’t even think Asahi signed off on that condition. ^^’
But regardless, Souma is all decided, and he’s trying, to the point that he’s bringing Erina mountains of dishes at a time. It makes me wonder what exactly Erina even says in response to the food. Does she just turn him away outright since there’s so many, or does she actually taste them and give an opinion? Because we already know that she likes his food, even if sometimes she isn’t blown away by it. I guess this scenario is the latter, or they’d put some focus on it.
It’s also interesting that Souma did try and bring up his dad’s knife with Megumi but then decided against it. It must be a really important family topic for Souma. We never see Souma sharing about himself, or opening up about his feelings. So the question is will Megumi broach the subject again, or will the info come out in a different way? Either way, I’m certainly interested, because it might be the coveted mom discussion I’ve been longing for. *-*
We also got a slumber party between the girls, as they asked Erina about her love troubles. I loved that Erina was describing Souma as her ideal type of guy, without realizing it. I think her not realizing her feelings towards Souma are for two reasons:
1) As I said, she’s really inexperienced about love, as her convo with Alice in that special pool chapter illustrated. So, I doubt she’s really thinking about what her feelings for Souma are.
2) She’s still kind of biased against Souma. Even in this chapter, we see he does things that annoy her. So, those thoughts hinder her from truly considering what her feelings have grown into despite those issues lol.
However, Megumi did realize who Erina was subconsciously describing. Though, I feel like Megumi wouldn’t likely be someone who’d point it out to Erina. I think her realization was more for our benefit. Megumi is essentially this story’s narrator, so we get a lot of information through her observations. But that’s also why I think it’s more likely Erina will realize the truth on her own, and that discovery might be in the same vein as her finding out Souma was Jou’s son. Her mind (and heart?) will explode haha! The question is, what will bring about this discovery? Whatever it is, it’s coming up soon. As I said, that’s ultimately the point of this particular arc, and “love triangle.”
I also think it’s hilarious that Erina, the shoujo fan, was literally given her own shoujo plot within a shounen in order to help her realize her feelings LMAO.
I am a little worried, though, because as was said, Souma won’t get to challenge Asahi (and get his dad’s knife back) until Erina says his food is delicious. So… is that plot point finally going to be wrapped up in this arc? It feels really likely that it will. So, I do have a theory of how Erina will realize her feelings for Souma. It’ll probably be coupled with Erina tasting Souma’s food, and finally admitting it’s delicious, much to his delight, and Asahi’s exit from this love triangle. Because, he already can tell he’s fighting a losing battle in the case of Erina’s feelings IMO.
But yes, I appreciated this comfy chapter very much. It has been long overdue OMG.
And speaking of comfy chapters, another reason I can’t be mad at this arc, is that we are finally getting a break from the tournaments/constant food battles. I’ve wanted that for AGES ;_; One of my major gripes with this series has always been the lack of balance between character development/interaction chapters, and food battles. Yes, this is a battle manga, but even battle manga take breaks to explore the world of the series, have adventures, and just show the characters building relationships, whether friendships or otherwise. This series, however, rarely ever has chapters like that. It’s frustrating.
BUT NOW, AT LAST, we are headed into one of those comfier arcs!!! And yes, they are headed into exams as well, but they are exams ON THE BEACH LMAO. And anyone who has seen or read any anime/manga ever, knows this is likely the obligatory fan service arc of the series. Especially with the way they phrased it. It seems it will be full of more romantic hijinks ohoho! I hope it will also be reminiscent of the hell camp arc, because that did have a nice mixture of comfy times/food challenges.
Anyway, I’m still liking this arc. The romance aspect needed to be touched upon at some point. It was promised from the very beginning, and the author is finally delivering on that promise. Again, is this the ideal way I would have preferred a romance arc? No. There are still major issues with the plot. Like the seemingly forgotten midnight chefs aspect (though I’m sure it’ll pop up again eventually since Asahi is tied to it). Also, wasn’t Erina warned that this Saiba guy was probably already in the school? Shouldn’t she have put two and two together by now? ^^’ But, that being said, I’m not hating these developments. On the contrary, I’m genuinely enjoying reading it. And that’s all that really matters to me. ^^
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